


alpheratz

by rhapsodies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Space, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 12:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11578092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhapsodies/pseuds/rhapsodies
Summary: “I didn’t sell you,” Naruto flat-out lies. He folds his arms. “Think of it more as a - temporary loan of services.”-Two months after the end of the Fourth Intergalactic War, Sakura becomes the bodyguard of the Hyūga Crown Princess. Things don't go exactly to plan.





	alpheratz

**Author's Note:**

> this goes out as a gift to [suman](http://www.chandane.tumblr.com), who's running the [naruto femslash week](https://narutofemslashevent.tumblr.com) on tumblr, who wanted her fave girls in space. i love you.... bro
> 
> alpheratz is one of the names of alpha andromedae, the brightest star in the andromeda galaxy.

The first time that Sakura is introduced to Her Imperial Highness, Hyūga Hinata, Crown Princess of the Hyūga dynasty, it’s in the aftermath of the Battle of Mugen, and she’s covered head-to-toe in shit and filth and other people’s blood. The last Ōtsutsuki battlecruiser had only just disappeared from the skyline before one of the lieutenants had received notification of the incoming Hyūga delegation; Sakura had immediately forgotten all about it, because the Iwa soldier she was attempting to coax into stability had promptly vomited red-brown sludge over her medical coveralls.

 “And this is- the medical wing?” someone asks politely. _Wing_ is something of a generous overstatement: Sakura’s makeshift medi-tent is propped up in one corner with three damaged pulse rifles.

She draws her attention back to the blown-open soldier lying on the table. _Diastole,_ she reminds herself, _release, and contract on the systole,_ siphoning away the blood that leaks out from the ruptured pulmonary tract. _Contract, and -_ goddamn fucking Ōtsutsuki and their pulse bombs - _release on the diastole._ She watches carefully as the cuts begin to knit together under her handheld regenerator.

The Iwagi _finally_ slips into stability, and Sakura activates the biobed’s homeostatic field with a tired sigh.

“Captain,” the sergeant says. Sakura contemplates the relative pros and cons of ignoring them totally and taking the next carrier up to the _Reliant_. The sergeant clears their throat. “Captain Haruno,” they repeat.

“I heard you the first time,” Sakura says, and turns around.

There’s a girl standing beside the sergeant who’s certainly old enough to be a soldier, but with none of the look about her that Sakura has come to be intimately familiar with. Sakura looks at her: the spun-silk of her hair, her formal robes and the strange antiseptic whiteness of her eyes. Sakura becomes uncomfortably aware of her own appearance, the sticky bloodslicks on her gloves.

The sergeant recites dutifully, “This is the Crown Princess of the Hyūga.”

“Your Grace,” Sakura says, after a pause. She has no idea how to address royalty that doesn’t take the shape of Uzumaki Naruto.

Hyūga Hinata gives a tiny smile. Sakura bites her lip, and bows just to make sure. There’s been no room in this war for proper etiquette; and that besides, the United Systems of Konohagakure have always been unconventional in their monarchy.

 “Captain Haruno is second in command of our Medical Corps,” the sergeant is explaining. “The Lieutenant-General is at Xomion with the First Battalion.”

“I’m sorry you caught us at a bad time. We’re not really- prepared to take any visitors right now.” Sakura snaps her gloves off and offers the Crown Princess a dry smile. “Well, I guess we’re actually not prepared to take visitors most times.”

The Crown Princess dips her head elegantly. “I apologise if I distracted you earlier.”

Sakura flushes hotly and splutters, “Oh- no- I mean, it was fine. You get used to noise when you’ve been fighting long enough.”

“That soldier- will they live?”

The Crown Princess gestures towards the Iwa on the biobed. Sakura had begun to forget how awfully hopeless these things can look, to someone else. “They should,” she says. “If I get them to our cruiser.” She hesitates, and adds firmly, “They _will._ I’ll make sure of it.”

“I regret that I can’t be of more help,” the Crown Princess says, and she sounds like she actually _means it._ “The war is – different, on the Citadel.”

And there: Sakura had forgotten, in the sudden flare of shock, that Hyūga Hinata was a presence in the Alliance Military Council, a step behind her father. Where Naruto should be, if he was anything less than an upstart nobody from Kajikawa.

“I’m sure you’re much better at Alliance politics than I would ever be,” Sakura says, and means it.

The Crown Princess smiles again, and Sakura swallows a rising tide of _oh fucking hell._

 “I’m glad you think so,” the Crown Princess answers.

Beside her, the Sergeant shifts. “If you’re finished here, Your Highness, we still have to meet with the Major.”

Sakura raises her eyebrow. Naruto is many things, and her friend foremost, but tactful is rarely one of them. She can only imagine the meeting will be nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. She carefully weighs her personal interest in the matter against her moral principles. Finally, she says, “Don’t let me keep you, Your Highness.”

Before she leaves, the Crown Princess fixes her with a look that Sakura can’t quite decipher. At last, she says: “Thank you for your service, Captain.”

Sakura’s stomach churns. Her entire face, ears and neck feel hot. _Royalty,_ she thinks. Ridiculous, because she speaks to royalty every day and it’s never bothered her before. “Get a grip, Haruno,” she mutters, and goes to begin the slow, tricky process of loading biobed-confined patients into the nearest shuttles.

It’s not until she makes it back to her quarters on the _Reliant_ that Sakura gets a chance to inspect her appearance. It doesn’t do much to improve her mood. There’s a splattering of mud across her face, and more of it caked into her hair. Still, even that is better than the sick-stains and the blood all down her front.

Sakura sets her shoulders. First, a shower, and a chance to clean away a week’s worth of battle-filth.

Then, she has a war to win.

\---

“How does it feel being planetside?”

Being dirtside is – Sakura sighs deeply. She’s been on Kasai for a little over two months now, and she still sleeps light enough to hear the tell-tale whine of cruiser engines overhead: but the only noise is city traffic, because while the war isn’t _finished,_ still tangled up in armistice agreements and colonies and selecting diplomatic envoys, in all the ways that matter, it’s over, and Sakura needs –

“To move the fuck on,” Ino says, and points at Sakura with her fork.

“I am – I already _have._ There’s nothing to even move on from.”

Ino fixes Sakura with a look. Sakura wishes that the Yamanaka clan weren’t such excellent short-range telepaths.

Sure enough: “Lie to me one more time, Haruno,” Ino warns. “I dare you.”

Sakura throws a dirty glare at the tabletop and goes to stand. Only Yamanaka Ino is interfering enough to drag her out for a semi-regular lunch date before offering a critique on Sakura’s lifestyle choices.

“You know I only want what’s best for you,” Ino says, hand propped under her chin. “Don’t turn into one of those crazy old guys who only talk about _when I was your age-_ ”

“We’re the same age, Ino,” Sakura interrupts.

Ino waves her hand dismissively. “Details, details.” She leans forward. “You need a _life_ again, you know?”

“Yeah,” Sakura says. “I know.”

After her afternoon training session, Sakura is scrubbing her hair dry from the shower when a missive from Naruto pings through on her tablet, requesting her presence. She makes for the Royal Quarters, completely mystified; personal experience has taught her that Naruto has no regard for monarchical protocol. If he wanted to see her, he would simply turn up.

Naruto’s assistant, Aiko, directs Sakura to the meeting chambers, instead of Naruto’s personal quarters.

“Sakura,” Naruto says enthusiastically. “Take a seat!”

Sakura does so, and levels a stare at the assorted dignitaries and officials scattered around the large table. The last time she’d been in this room, Naruto had manoeuvred the Ōtsutsuki queen into calling a ceasefire. She recognises almost none of them, except General Hatake Kakashi, who’d assumed leadership of the Namikaze planets while Naruto had been too busy getting himself blown up to follow the formal proceedings, and then cheerfully given up rule as soon as he could.

She says neutrally, “Your Highness.”

Naruto pulls a face at her. “Don’t you start with that, too. It’s bad enough with all the bowing.”

“You might not have noticed, Naruto,” Sakura points out, “but you are the King now.”

One of the aides clears their throat pointedly, and Naruto sharpens his focus. “The thing is,” he says, “we’ve been negotiating a betrothal contract with the Hyūga Imperial family for a while now. The Hyūgas believe now is an opportune moment to display-” and here, Naruto pauses, and taps his finger to his lips. “What was it- oh, _intra-Alliance strength and solidarity in peace-time._ ”

“A betrothal contract,” Sakura says blankly.

“With the eldest Hyūga princess,” one of the aides informs her. They shuffle some papers around. “We need, more than ever, to show good faith with our neighbouring empires. The arrangement will prove that these systems do not stand alone, something we’ve struggled with since...”

The aide stutters into silence. Sakura knows how that sentence would’ve finished. The smaller planets that comprise the United Systems of Konohagakure have been mercenary fodder since the death of Naruto’s parents almost twenty years ago, and years of broken military rule have only destabilized their political standing in the Citadel.

“Emperor Hiashi began communicating with us on this matter directly almost as soon as Naruto was found to be the Namikaze heir. It’s really a better match than we could have expected – Lady Hinata is next in succession to the Hyūga line, and her father’s empire is strong.” Kakashi leans back in his chair and regards Naruto. Sakura knows what he isn’t saying: Naruto has had no formal upbringing, and had his regency thrown upon him less than a year ago. In spite of his military acumen and his scandalous ascension to the throne, he really doesn’t have much going for him, politically speaking.

“I don’t – quite see what this has to do with me,” Sakura says.

“Emperor Hiashi has requested that Naruto supply the Crown Princess with an Imperial Guard of his own choosing, at least until the marriage contract is finalized,” Kakashi says.

Something nameless settles in Sakura’s chest. “And you chose me?” she asks.

“Nothing’s final yet,” Naruto stresses. “And I’d be there most of the time, anyway. The Emperor thinks it’d be an – _impressive show of commitment_ if we spend time together before the marriage. Display our unity, that sort of dogshit.”

The aide next to Naruto winces. Sakura, who has heard him say much worse, doesn’t flinch.

“Are you saying you just – _sold me_? To the _Hyūgas?_ ” she snaps indignantly, trying to think through the sudden tightness in her throat. “I will beat you, Uzumaki. King or not, I will _beat you.”_

All of the collected politicians flush uncomfortably. Sakura is almost sure that Hatake is smiling under his mask. “I didn’t sell you,” Naruto flat-out lies. He folds his arms. “Think of it more as a - temporary loan of services.”

“I don’t see how you can think that’s an improvement.”

“It’s only for a few months. A year, at most. There’s no one else I can trust to do this, Sakura.” Naruto has adopted his most wheedling voice. Sakura digs her fingernails into her palm, furiously.

“I’ve only just come back from the war.”

Naruto gestures at himself and says, “So have I. At least you’re not the one getting married.”

Sakura slowly crushes her anger into something manageable. Naruto, goddamn him, is right. She wonders, idly, how much political bullshit was necessary to browbeat Naruto into accepting this. Everyone in this room, surely, knows about Sasuke.

“So you want me to – what, be her bodyguard?”

Naruto grins. “Sort of, yeah. Hopefully without anyone needing to be saved.”

“Then what am I supposed to do all day?” Sakura asks, flummoxed.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Naruto says. “You’re my most capable captain. Anyway, think of it like a free holiday!”

Sakura cuts her eyes at him until he softens and smiles, honestly. “I won’t make you do this unless you want it,” he says. All of his aides sigh in tandem.

Sakura waves her hand in Naruto’s direction. “Give it here. But you owe me, Uzumaki.”

One of the lawyers brings over a tablet, glowing faintly blue, and places it in front of Sakura.

“We’ll have a few weeks, to finalize all the details,” Naruto is saying. “This contract is just to confirm a temporary change of Empire allegiance and your agreement to the terms of Hyūga employment.”

“Great,” she says drily.

Months; a year at most. Sakura can do a year. She presses her thumb to the screen, and says, “Haruno, Sakura,” and that, she supposes, is that.

\---

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

sakura.

when I told you stop lazing around, I **DID NOT** mean go fuck off and join the Hyūga empire

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING

 

FROM: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

TO: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

Ino,

I know you can’t fight his sad dog look any better than I can.

 

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

**THAT IS NOT THE POINT!!!!!!!!!!! AND YOU KNOW IT**

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

p.s. if you see any cute, non-engaged Hyūgas over there you know my address

**\---**

The first Konohagakure dispatch team goes out a little over two months later. Sakura is squashed into the corner of one of Naruto’s newer ships, a sleekly chromatic thing that barely makes a murmur when it lifts off. She scrolls through her (admittedly, kind of empty) messages until Naruto is dragged out of the cockpit and deposited into her care.

“You’ve met her before right?” Naruto asks suddenly.

Sakura raises her eyebrows. “Once,” she says, even though it can hardly be called a proper meeting. “I don’t think I made a very good first impression.”

“Me, neither,” Naruto grimaces. Someone at the palace has attempted to bully his hair into obedience and, as a result, it sticks up like he’s wandered through an ion storm. Sakura has seen Naruto’s hair resist plasma grenades, blaster fire and weeks without washing: she doubts even the fanciest centre system gels would have much of an impact. He has, however, been shoved into something resembling formal robes.

As if on cue: “I hate this,” he mutters furiously, tugging at the collar.

“Stop messing with it. You’re going to ruin your only decent set of clothes.”

“Sorry,” Naruto says, completely insincere.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Naruto props his feet up on the seat and hugs his knees. He fixes her with an inscrutable look, and says: “What did you think of her?”

Sakura would be lying if she said she’d spared more than a passing thought for the Hyūga princess during the rest of the war. It’s difficult, now, to remember more than a hot flush of shame, spreading like a virus all down her neck.

“I heard she’s a real beauty,” one of the lawyers chimes in.

“And she worked over in Tactics during the war,” another one adds. “Although – I don’t know what princesses do during peace.”

There hasn’t been a princess in Konohagakure for almost as long as anyone can remember. Naruto rests his head on his knees; Sakura, who has known him long enough to read him like a child’s tablet, is increasingly worried about his lack of expression.

“They rule, I guess,” she says bracingly. “The Hyūga empire is pretty fucking big.”

“Don’t fucking say fuck,” Naruto says, sly. Across the shuttle, Aiko frowns blackly.

Sakura moves closer to him. This, at least, is more like the Naruto she knows.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” she tells him quietly; even though she’s sure bowing out now might mortally offend the entire of the United Hyūga Empire.

“I know that,” Naruto says. “It’s not that.”

Sakura rests her hands on her lap and waits. _Sasuke,_ she thinks, but –

Naruto says: “It’s a little like when I was younger, right? And you make up all these dumb stories about fighting wars and marrying princesses and it’s just – it’s not supposed to _actually happen._ ” He pauses and makes a grab at Sakura’s hand. “God. I didn’t think being a King would be this much of a ball-ache.”

Sakura tightens her grip on his hand. “Hey, at least you get to kiss a princess.”

“Sure, that’s what you would care about. Just typical, Sakura.”

“I care about your wellbeing more than anything,” Sakura says, aggrieved. “I should’ve let you bleed out at Shūmatsu.”

Naruto leans into her side.

“I know you do,” he says, uncommonly serious, and Sakura can’t think of a single thing to say that doesn’t sound completely pathetic, and by the time their shuttle reaches the Hyūga palace docking bay, the conversation has shifted away completely. It’s not until Sakura is out of the shuttle, rolling out the journey-tightness in her thighs and shoulders, that Naruto finally drops her hand.

The walk to the audience chamber seems, to Sakura, to take uncommonly long. She’s accustomed to hours, days, of walking, but this – the corridors of the Hyūga palace are made of a well-shined natural milky quartz that seem to carry on for miles with no possible end in sight.

She’s going to get lost here and die. Go figure.

“If you would wait here,” the Hyūga aide says suddenly, and stops in front of a huge archway. They announce Sakura’s party with more gravitas, she thinks, than the situation really calls for, and then she’s following Naruto up towards the dais at the far end of the hall. The walls here have been crafted into intricate, winding patterns that rise up across the ceiling like spider’s webs. The very sight of it has Sakura’s breath caught in her throat.

And then Naruto is falling to one knee and saying, “Your Imperial Highness.”

Hyūga Hiashi, His Majesty the Emperor of the United Hyūga Planets, is a broad-shouldered man with the long hair favoured by his people, but none of the beauty that Sakura half-remembers in his daughter.

“Your Majesty,” he replies with a bow.

There’s more after that, greetings and prettily-worded compliments that’s all so exquisitely boring that Sakura tunes it out with the ease of practice; she only slips back into attention when a trio of women walk onto the dais, all dressed impeccably in rich silks.

“May I present my daughter,” the Emperor says, and gestures to one of the women. “Her Serene Highness Hyūga Hinata.”

Sakura has always prided herself on her memory retention. Clearly, she’s been lying to herself, because Hyūga Hinata is fucking _gorgeous._ Her head is tilted upwards, and Sakura notices the gloss of her hair, the suggestion of a smile at the corner of her mouth like the pink kiss of early dawn. That Sakura _forgot_ this – even with the war, and the death, and the shit-stink of fear. Somehow, she’s been depriving herself of the memory all this time.

“I am honoured to welcome you here, Commander,” Hinata says, and smiles fully –

 _Oh, fuck,_ Sakura thinks, with surprising clarity.

Eventually Naruto is gesticulating in Sakura’s general direction, and saying, “Captain Haruno, Your Highness, as we discussed.”

Sakura bows to the appropriate depth and furiously tries to think of something to say.

“It is – a privilege to serve you, Your Highness,” she manages. She can feel the flush spreading down the back of her neck. She has always been in control of her own body. That she’s losing that fine-tuned mastery is – annoying, at the least.

“You are to be my Imperial Guard?” the Crown Princess asks, and smiles again when Naruto nods. It’s uncomfortably like staring directly into a white sun. “I look forward to our time together.”

Sakura doesn’t trust herself to say anything remotely proper. She bows low again instead.

After the necessary introductions are made, Sakura is shown to her suite of rooms and deposited there with a swiftness that she can appreciate. First, she unpacks her clothes and scant few personal possessions: the holo with Naruto and Sasuke when they were thirteen, outside Kasai’s largest waterfall and wet-through to the bone; a small spinning dancer of glittering obsidian from the market on Nar Shyeen; her first strength-amplifying bracelets that the Duchess Tsunade calibrated to Sakura’s physiology herself.

When this is done, she sits cross-legged on the cloud-soft bed.

“Don’t even think about it,” she tells herself firmly. “Hyūga princesses are strictly off-limits.”

Talking to herself: maybe Ino was right. Maybe she really _is_ going crazy.

\---

Sakura suspects that whoever organised this official transfer of her _services of state_ had heard about her and Naruto’s more notable wartime exploits, and had neatly found somewhere else for Naruto to be while she goes over the details of her contract with the Emperor and the Crown Princess.

She’s sure it would be exquisitely boring, if the Crown Princess wasn’t seated directly across from her. As it is, Sakura finds that going over the legalities isn’t a _complete_ waste of her time, even though she’s boxed into one of the smaller Imperial offices for more than three hours. It turns out that the Hyūga Imperial family are really sort of paranoid about allowing strangers into their stronghold, which Sakura supposes is understandable, if irritating. There had been a story a few years ago – and these sorts of things are always public domain – about how a band of mercenaries had kidnapped the eldest Hyūga princess, and made it all the way to one of the systems bordering the edge of the Unknown region before getting captured.

Still, the view is good.

“I vow to uphold the sacred laws of the Hyūga Empire, and to protect and defend its Crown Princess with my life,” Sakura repeats for about the twentieth time, and presses her thumb to the screen.

The Hyūga lawyer nods solemnly, and flicks to the next page.

An hour and half later, the entire thing has been officially tied up and Sakura is free to- “Familiarise yourself with the compound,” the Emperor says. He stares at Sakura in a way that suggests he isn’t completely certain yet that she isn’t going to pull a blaster out of her shirt and kill them all.

“You aren’t required to become my Guard until after the engagement ceremony,” the Crown Princess says, when her father has left the room. She stares at a point on the table near Sakura’s hands as she speaks, voice as quiet as bird-flight. “But I thought it might be practical to spend some time with each other before then. I don’t want this post to be uncomfortable for you.”

Today, the Princess is dressed more simply in some shimmering pinkish material that Sakura has never seen before, delicately accented with spider’s-lace. _Not thinking about it,_ Sakura reminds herself.

“That would be – nice,” she says, completely inadequately.

Which is how Sakura winds up getting a tour of the Hyūga palace gardens from the Crown Princess who is, surprisingly, completely uninformed on the many types of flora they have growing there.

Sakura spots a blot of shining white and bends down. “Cavassium orchids.”

The Princess glances towards her.

“I didn’t know anyone grew these outside of the Maashyn system,” Sakura explains. “They were pretty much lost after the war.”

“You’ve been to Cavassium B?” the Crown Princess asks.

“Once – before,” and Sakura gestures expansively. “Well, you know.”

“Were you there?”

Sakura pauses. “Not when it fell. It was beautiful, though.”

“I have heard,” the Princess agrees, and touches her fingertip to one of the flowers. When she looks over at Sakura, her face is impossible to read. “I’ll request these for the engagement ceremony. So – others can remember.”

The tips of Sakura’s ears feel warm. Do not say _that’s nice_ , she instructs herself.

“Thank you,” she says instead, even though it wasn’t her planet that was lost, or her people. But then – they weren’t the Princess’s, either.

They keep walking through the meticulously neat rows of foreign blooms. “Have you always had an interest in botany?”

“Oh!” Sakura says, and laughs. “It’s not me, really. My First Lieutenant was a botanist before the war started. I guess I picked some of it up, eventually.”

The Princess nods, darting a quick look at Sakura before looking away just as quickly. Sakura checks her frustration; Hyūgas are notably reticent and the Crown Princess seems even more so than she’d expected. She rubs her thumb along her forearm, where her sleeve hides the block tattoo of her serial number.

“Do you want me to tell you about Na- I mean, the King?” she asks in desperation.

The Crown Princess flushes delicately and says, “I suppose so,” which really isn’t a promising sign of passionate, fated love. Still, Sakura has known Naruto since he was knee-high; there are multitudes of ways she can twist this to his advantage.

Before she can start telling the vastly altered story of how Naruto tapped into his Uzumaki birthright, the Crown Princess tilts her head up to the sky. In the warm sunlight, her eyes have a silver trace in them, and the bow of her mouth is unbelievably lovely. Sakura has a moment of dizzying vertigo.

“It’s about to rain,” the Princess says politely. “We should go inside.”

“Right,” Sakura says, and follows the Princess back to the palace in silence.

\---

The idea of the engagement ceremony had gestated from a simple signing of a contract to something of monstrous proportions. By the time it rolls around, the Konohagakure and Hyūga personnel have conspired to invite almost every noble within charted space, with the exception of one Uchiha Sasuke, a small mercy for which Sakura is unspeakably grateful.

Naruto, as expected, is entirely unbothered by this turn of events.

“Of course they want to show me off. I’m a real catch, Sakura,” he says.

“And modest, too,” Sakura replies flatly.

Naruto flattens his palm over his chest. “A woman after my own heart.”

Sakura is fully aware of the real reason for this ridiculous thing, and she’s almost sure that Naruto is, too: even after the fairytale of Naruto’s climb from commoner to king, there are still doubts about Konoha’s political strength. A show of unity of this magnitude will reach the far corners of each quadrant by the next morning. It’s not the most subtle of moves, but then – this is Naruto.

The day of the ceremony dawns fine and clear, without a sign of Alpha Niihari’s notorious acid storms, and so court is held outside. The Crown Princess and Naruto kneel side-by-side on a makeshift dais, in elaborate, matching suits of opposing colours. Somehow, Naruto has been forced out of his customary, eye-watering colour choices and muscled into a spring-fresh green (“For Kasai’s forests,” he’ll explain later, “I tried telling them I was actually from Kajikawa, but no one listened.”) that matches the Crown Princess’s gentle lilac, and the flowers woven into her hair.

The actual ceremony, for all the pomp, turns out to be dull as shit, and Sakura spends most of it considering the shine of her new boots until after the contract has been signed. The pair needle-prick their fingers, too, and print their blood on a scroll of vellum.

( _Blood contracts are archaic,_ Sakura had hissed, _have you lost your fucking mind,_ and Naruto had shrugged and said _the Emperor is paranoid._ )

“Congratulations,” Tenten says. “You’re officially the first non-Hyūga Imperial Guard in over three hundred years.”

Tenten is one of the Emperor’s legal aides, a scalpel-sharp flame of a girl from one of the smaller planets under Hyūga rule. Sakura likes her enormously, and has done since Tenten complimented her on the two short-wave knives Sakura had strapped to her thigh.

“No pressure, then.”

“If it makes you feel better, you’ve already lasted longer than the last one.”

“Don’t tell me,” Sakura says. “I really don’t want to know.”

Naruto, despite letting the Hyūga’s have their way with the scope of the thing, managed to win his own battles in regards to the reception. Sakura’s understanding of royal engagements had been that they were decidedly prim, stale things, with everyone buttoned up to the chin; today, though, is nothing like that all.

The newly-engaged couple have the first dance together, keeping completely professional, and then the entire thing rapidly deteriorates into a mess of eating, drinking and dancing. It reminds Sakura so much of Konohagakure, as it was before the war, that for a moment that she feels something – nameless, thick and aching in her throat, and then someone is pressing a tall glass of wine into her hand, and someone else is pulling her to the improvised dancefloor.

She moves out after a moment, standing in relative proximity to the Crown Princess – her responsibility, now, she thinks blankly.

The post of Imperial Guard has been filled by a member of the Hyūga branch family since the inception of the Empire hundreds of years ago. By all rights, Sakura should not be standing here: but First Lieutenant Hyūga Neji had bled out on Datara, and so here she is.

She drains her glass and switches it for another full one. The j’Mimino are terrible warriors but excellent wine-makers, and it has a taste of dark berries.

“Sakura! Dance with me!”

Sakura hides her empty glass behind her back and tries to look suitably professional.

“I’m _working,_ Naruto,” she says austerely.

“Liar,” Naruto says, and tugs at her hand. “I’ve already seen you drinking, and the First Minister from Kaminara has been chasing me all evening. You _know_ ze’s a terrible dancer. I need you to _save me_ , Sakura.”

Sakura crosses her arms pointedly. “Shouldn’t you be making nice with your future in-laws?”

“I’m fostering diplomatic relations,” Naruto says brightly.

“You’re such an idiot,” Sakura sighs, but lets him lead her in an energetic, if technically inept waltz that knocks over at least three different guests and sends the General of Kumo’s military careening into a crowd of onlookers. Luckily, the General is both affable and familiar with Naruto, and shoots them both an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Naruto waves back. “He’s promised to perform for us, later. Apparently he’s composed a song.”

“Lovely,” Sakura says, remembering the brief time that Kumo and Konoha’s forces had formed a joint assault. Some things, include the General’s musical leanings, cannot be forgotten.

Not long after that, Naruto abandons her to pursue a dance with the King of Suna, who seems suitably afraid of Naruto’s – everything.

The Crown Princess is still sitting exactly where Sakura left her, wide-eyed and hands folded in her lap.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Your Highness?” Sakura can’t help but ask.

Beside her, the Crown Princess starts and blushes. “It’s – very different to our usual ceremonies,” she says evasively.

 _I’m sure,_ Sakura thinks wryly, watching Naruto succeed in his attempt to capture Gaara of the Sand. Neither of the King’s siblings appear inclined to rescue him.

The Crown Princess is watching them, too, and Sakura can’t place the look in her eyes until it clicks – wistful, she realises, and before she can stop herself she’s stretched out her hand, palm-up, and asked, “Would you care to dance?”

It is, by all rights, a monumentally stupid thing to do. Sakura can hear the wave of gossip rolling out across the crowd, feel the heaviness of several pairs of eyes on her back. The Crown Princess looks at Sakura’s hand, and then her face, and then her hand again, before rising gracefully and saying, “Of course, Captain,” and placing her hand in Sakura’s own.

Sakura leads them out to a stretch of grass that is comparatively danger-free, and rests her hand against the Princess’s waist lightly.

Once they’re dancing, Sakura takes a moment to admire the easy poise of the Princess’s dancing. Practice, she remembers: these sorts of events are what princesses train for. Someone has threaded tiny, glittering beads into her hair that catch the last of the evening light, and her hand is a feather-weight in Sakura’s own.

The Princess clears her throat and stares past Sakura’s shoulder.

“Where did you learn to dance?” she asks.

“Oh,” Sakura says, and spins them around. “I had to learn some formal dances for the King’s coronation. Apart from that, I only know local ones. I’m very proficient at the Kajikawan Hop.”

“Perhaps,” the Princess says, and looks up to Sakura’s face. “Perhaps you could show me, sometime.”

“I’d like that very much,” Sakura assents, dipping the Princess as low as is respectable. She hasn’t danced for fun since before joining the military; it would mean something, she thinks, to do that again.

The Princess’s hand tightens on Sakura’s own. “Are you familiar with this dance?”

Sakura laughs. It might’ve been sensible to have stopped with the wine a couple of glasses ago. The dance itself is a slow, lilting thing that plucks at the ground, and would’ve been completely out of place in even the nicest of the dancehalls that Naruto used to drag her to.

She says: “Not at all.”

“It’s traditional, on my planet, to play this at betrothal ceremonies. We don’t usually dance it with- strangers.”

The Princess’s eyes are very bright. Sakura smiles again.

“This is how it should be danced,” the Princess murmurs, so softly that Sakura almost doesn’t hear her, and then Sakura is overwhelmed by the sudden closeness of her, the whisper of the Princess’s  dress over the grass. It’s as though the song has changed pitch: but it hasn’t, and the sweet, strange smell of the Princess’s perfume might be driving her mad.

Sakura should say something: she is a Captain of Konohagakure’s military forces, and a Hyūga Imperial Guard. Dancing in this way with a betrothed woman is wholly irresponsible.

The music ends.

The Crown Princess pulls away. “Thank you for the dance, Captain,” she says formally.

Sakura drops into a respectful bow, and leaves to find the nearest spirit that she can before she makes a total fool of herself. She watches the Princess melt back into the crowd, getting drawn into a conversation with her younger sister and the Marquess of Hoshi. Sakura takes a long drink of winter-spirit and absolutely does not think about anything at all, until one of her former military squad-mates captures her hand to _show these Hyūgas the virility and passion of Konoha’s dancers!_

Luckily, Sakura is drunk enough that the prospect of keeping with Rock Lee, Duke of Ijira, is not at all daunting, and by the end of it she’s flush-tired, of the dance and of the weighted press of so many bodies around her, and slips away from the party to catch her bearings.

This late, the palace gardens seem less strictly ordered: small, iridescent mercy-bugs land on the plants, and the straight edges of the grass are blurred.

Behind her, someone lets loose a burst of fireworks, a rising gunfire of noise and colour that webs across the night sky that takes a while to fade. Sakura presses her fingers against her closed eyes until she stops seeing echo-stars.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Sakura twitches and resists the urge to draw one of her knives from the non-regulation hidden pocket in her jacket. The Princess is looking across the gardens, forearms resting on the low wall.

“Someone should put a bell on you,” Sakura says, and swallows the last of her sneaked-away spirit. It’s unlike Princesses to be so fleet of foot, she thinks decidedly. There’s enough unconventional royalty in this match with Naruto alone.

“Red spirit?” the Princess asks, but she’s already taken a sip and is crinkling her nose.

“It’s not for everyone,” Sakura says.  

Now that the fireworks have stopped, Sakura begins to notice how quiet it is this far away from the rest of the party. The sky is still bathed red-gold, and the Princess’s skin too. It takes her a moment to realise the Princess is saying something – _fuck,_ she’s going to have the mother of all hangovers tomorrow, the Emperor is going to be livid –

“-you looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t my intention. I apologise,” the Princess is saying, stiffly.

“Oh, fuck, no, that wasn’t you,” Sakura says, and hides her face in her hand. “Pretend I didn’t swear in front of you.”

 “Of course not,” says the Princess solemnly. “An Imperial Guard is a bastion of decorum at all times.”

Sakura breaks into laughter, and the Princess smiles, a soft small thing: ocean water lapping at the sand.

“You didn’t have to come out after me, you know. I think you’re getting our job descriptions crossed.”

“Conversation with the Kumogakure was – tiring.” The Princess twists one of her rings completely around her index finger. “And I don’t want you to be unhappy here.”

Sakura touches two of her fingers to the inside of Princess’s wrist. The skin there is so fine, hiding the tiny hollow bird-bones.

“Come on,” she says at last, and stretches out her hand. “You shouldn’t be hiding away when it’s your party. I might even teach you the Kasai Jive.”

“Lead the way, Captain,” the Princess says, hand on Sakura’s arm. Sakura feels the half touch against her skin long after it’s over.

\---

The next morning, Sakura wakes up and promptly rushes to the bathroom to retch up the entirety of last night into the bowl, before resting her head against the cold floor with a groan.

She’s managed to drag her way back to her bed (blessedly soft, and large enough that she could fall into it and disappear entirely) when the door beeps with an entry request. Sakura considers shouting at whoever the hell it is to eat shit and leave her alone, but then she remembers that only a few people know where her room is, and advising the Emperor of the Hyūga Continents to eat shit is generally frowned upon.

“Coming,” she grunts instead, and wilfully does her best to ignore the needle-points of pain behind her eyes.

Naruto is standing in front of her door in a woefully ratty shirt. Sakura hopes it’s not one of his stealthily-hoarded pre-regency ones, but she’s long given up hope that Naruto will bend to his head of PR’s demands. She narrows her eyes and doesn’t budge from the doorway.

“You look as god-awful as I feel. And trust me, that’s not a compliment.”

“Yeah-” Naruto says, and scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Can I come in? People are gonna think we’re having a torrid love affair if you keep me on your doorstep like this.”

“No one who has ever met us would think that,” Sakura tells him, but stands aside to let him past. Naruto promptly sprawls all over her bed, octopus-like, and Sakura lets him when he tugs her into his side.

She wrinkles her nose. “You need to bathe, moron.”

“You sure know how to warm a guy’s heart, Sakura.”

Sakura shifts until she’s curled up against Naruto more comfortably. For all her talk, something about the awful stink of him is calming and familiar, even if she’ll swallow her own fist before owning up to it. Sometimes she’s so proud of him that it chokes her, a heavy weight on the centre of her tongue.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re barging into my room, or do I have to whack it out of you?”

Against her, Naruto physically recoils.

“Maybe I just wanted some quality time with-”

Sakura levels a flat look at the line of Naruto’s shoulder. When that fails to work, she jabs him in the abdomen with her index finger.

“Ow, Sakura,” he whines, and huffs out a sigh.

“Melodrama,” warns Sakura, and adjusts her pillow.

Years of being in close-quarters with Naruto have made her somewhat of an expert (as much as anyone _can_ be, she thinks, in someone so uniquely prone to life-altering revelations) in reading him. She taps out a rhythm on her wrist, over the radius, and waits for Naruto to complete his requisite stewing.

Finally, he says:

“You know you’re the only real friend I’ve ever really had, right?”

It’s so far removed from anything Sakura expected that considers rescinding her title as the resident Naruto-whisperer. But when she thinks about it, it’s true: Naruto has a lot of friends, now, people crawling over each other to get just half a second of his time, but they want His Majesty, the King of the United Systems of Konohagakure.

“Yes,” she allows.

Naruto’s hand tightens on her shirt. “Sometimes I think it would’ve been a lot simpler if I became a farmer, instead,” he says quietly.

“You would’ve been absolutely out of your fucking mind with boredom after two weeks,” Sakura says.

“You’re not wrong,” Naruto replies, in that same weighted tone.

Sakura struggles upward. “Are you gonna run away on me, Uzumaki? Because I’ll have you know that you’d be dead in month without me.”

“I think you’re vastly exaggerating my incapability.”

Sakura studies Naruto’s face carefully. The tiredness, she expects, and the hangover-induced abject misery too. She thinks of the Princess’s hand on her shoulder; _this is how it should be danced._ “Naruto-” she starts, but Naruto is already rolling out of the bed with a smile stretched all over his face.

“I’m gonna get something for the dehydration,” he lies unconvincingly. “I think the Emperor wants to see us today, by the way.”

Whatever Naruto is hiding is completely wiped out in the face of this new indignity, and by the time she pulls her face out of her pillow, he’s already gone.

\---

“A-” Sakura says, and watches the Emperor flick through a cycle of planets on the holograph. She starts again: “A tour- of the Empire.”

“Not the entire Empire, of course,” one of the aides says earnestly. “That would take far too long.”

“Great,” Sakura says, without any of the accompanying enthusiasm.

In front of her, Naruto sucks in a breath but mercifully keeps his tongue still. The Crown Princess keeps her head bowed, deferential, and her hands neat in her lap. She knows the weight of those hands in her own, Sakura thinks stupidly, and immediately turns away from that road of thought.

The Emperor’s aide is giving her a distinctly unimpressed look.

“We have decided on about ten core planets to cover during the three-month tour. There’s little chance of unrest so soon after the Fourth Intergalactic War, but a show of unity and progress would definitely enhance morale.”

Sakura chokes down the _are you fucking serious_ that threatens to slide out of her mouth. She shoots a very, very filthy look at Naruto for getting her into this mess in the first place.

“Extended vacation,” Naruto reminds her serenely. Sakura folds her hands behind her back to resist clipping his ear.

The rest of the meeting follows along the same lines: pertinent information on the various diplomats they’ll have to meet, the particular customs of each planet, and the local dialects. Naruto, who speaks only Standard with a vague smattering of sundry collection of swears that he picked up from around Kajikawa’s flight-docks, looks suitably distressed.

Dispassionately, the Emperor says, “I will have the relevant information packets forwarded to your tablets,” and then his aide is shooing them all out of the office.

As soon as the door clicks shut, Sakura points her finger at Naruto’s chest. “No stress, you said,” she snaps.

Naruto grins and rubs at his arm.

He says, “Sakura, how am I supposed to know what the Emperor had planned?”

“You better enjoy your time on Kasai,” she warns, and pokes him again. “Because I will fucking _kill you myself.”_

“You always say the sweetest things,” Naruto says brightly, and ducks her fist when it swings at his head. He starts to edge away. “I’ll see you before I leave!”

The Crown Princess is looking at her inquisitively. “You are very – informal, with him,” she says softly.

“Oh,” Sakura says. She can feel her face starting to heat. “I’ve known him a very long time.”

She wonders what the Princess is thinking with this line of questioning: Naruto’s origin is public knowledge, a modern fairytale that the galaxy has settled into accepting.

 Naruto was raised an orphan in one of Konohagakure’s overcrowded homes on the small planet of Kajikawa, and joined the Union’s junior military forces as soon as he could (this was where Sakura met him, for the first time, although this fact is omitted from most renditions of the story). It was only when the Ōtsutsuki began to burn through the outer reaches of the galaxy that all the relevant documentation was unearthed to prove him as the King, and by then the entire galaxy was too embroiled in war to care much that an over-eager, untrained upstart had been put in charge of Konohagakure’s systems. _It’s very hard to dethrone a war hero with his face on most of the promotional holoreels in the central sector,_ Naruto had told her impishly.

There is a pinprick line between the Princess’s brows.

“You care about him,” she says, decisively, although Sakura cannot for the life of her figure out what has been decided.

Sakura opens her mouth to speak, and closes it again. It feels suddenly as though whatever she says has some supreme importance that she hasn’t been at all warned about.

“He’s my friend,” she says helplessly.

The Princess, unexpectedly, starts to smile: a slow-creeping thing, golden ivy across a window. “I’m glad to hear that,” she says, and Sakura is abruptly certain that the two of them were having entirely separate conversations. “I was hoping to show you the lake, perhaps. If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

“Yes,” Sakura says, probably too quick off the draw. She wonders: why ask, since it’s Sakura’s job to be wherever the Crown Princess is.

She follows the Princess out past the gardens to an innocuous low-rise building that Sakura has never seen before, and waves down the guards. Inside are a collection of well-shined speeders, lined up neatly in rows.

“I hope you can fly one of these,” the Princess says. “I’ve never been trained.”

Sakura has, but only to the bare minimum. “I’ll try not to get us both killed.”

The authorisation card that the Princess hands her belongs to a speeder that most likely cost more than all Sakura’s military pay in a lump sum. Naruto would give a limb, she thinks, to drive one of these, and as she settles in beside the Princess she can’t help but smile against the whip of the wind. The Princess directs her, _here_ and _turn left_ and once a small touch on her hand that Sakura is deliberately not thinking about.

“Do you go here often?” she asks, when the road has thickened out.

“I used to,” the Princess says. “With my cousin. I’ve missed it since – you know.”

“I know,” Sakura murmurs. Again: that bird-flight touch. Sakura is _not thinking about it._

“I wanted to come back again. I don’t think I’ll have much of a chance after I’m married.”

The Crown Princess sounds wistful, and it hits Sakura then that the slip of a woman beside her is going to Empress of the Hyūga one day. That this, for her, is a sort of temporary arrhythmia. So much of Sakura’s life has been spent ever-moving, changing and growing and keeping up, that it only registers as a dull sense of surprise low in her chest. This is one thing, finally, that she can’t catch up to.

But then – she could’ve said the same for Naruto, and here she is.

 _One last turn just here,_ the Princess is saying, and Sakura realises she never replied.

She parks the speeder. “The Spirits take your grief,” she says softly, “and take your hand to lead you through the darkness. So is my prayer, the Spirits hear my voice.”

Sakura takes off her helmet and looks out to the lake that the Princess has brought her to. The waters of this planet, its burning rains, are deadly to the touch, but today the lake is sparkling like the Gods have flung a handful of stars in its red depths.

“Kasai?”

“No,” Sakura answers, and feels her mouth curve into a smile. “Something from the war.”

The Princess falls silent, and starts to climb out of the speeder. Sakura feels as though that is something she ought to offer her help with. Throw her coat across a puddle, maybe. “Do you-” she starts, feeling foolish.

“I can manage,” the Princess answers, smiling mischievously. “Are you going to wait in there all afternoon?”

“Right,” Sakura says, and gives herself a vigorous mental shake.

The Princess leads her to a grassy knoll some feet away from the lake’s shores, by a patch of native lilies that bloom larger than Sakura’s forearm. It’s strange to sit here in silence: the Princess’s particular sort of quiet has a thoughtful edge to it that Sakura, who usually finds it impossibly uncomfortable, finds herself reluctant to speak. It’s not – intimate, exactly, but it’s something close. Standing in the still centre of a space-storm.

“Hinata,” the Princess says some time later.

Sakura blinks.

“It’s my name,” the Princess explains, patiently.

 _I know that,_ Sakura doesn’t say: Hyūga Hinata, the Crown Princess of the United Hyūga Empire. The meaning: _In the sun._ Sakura knows all of this.

“Hinata,” she echoes: rolls the staccato melody of it around her mouth. “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

\---

Once Naruto returns from his last trip back home to make sure the entirety of Konohagakure won’t collapse without his guiding presence, the Emperor packs them off to begin this absurd fucking tour. The shuttle that’s been commandeered for their use started out as a top-of-the-line civilian vehicle, but can now withstand just about anything short of an unexpected supernova.

Sakura has been instructed to sit in the passenger hold with Naruto and Hinata. First, Hinata sits Sakura between the two of them, as some kind of fleshy buffer.

Things go downhill from there.

“I heard that Xthunda IV is famous for its dancing,” Hinata says timidly.

“I know,” replies Naruto. “I was stationed there for a bit during the war. Although I guess no one was doing much dancing, then.”

Hinata nods quickly. “Were you there, too, Sakura?” she asks.

“Only for a while, when the fighting was heaviest.” Sakura says. Naruto had been there for a few weeks longer, leading the campaign; she wills Hinata to ask him something else.

“It was supposed to have been very beautiful, before.”

Naruto shrugs. “It was alright, I guess,” he says, when it becomes clear Sakura isn’t going to answer.

“Oh.”

Clenching her jaw, Sakura looks out of the window and tries to imagine her anywhere but this shuttle. The white-bright stars streak past the transparent steel window. Xthunda IV is a strange choice for a first stop, Sakura thinks: even before the Ōtsutsuki wrecked it, the planet’s monsoon rains were formidable and lasted for months. What’s left of it is little more than a graveyard.

When they dock, Naruto clambers out of the shuttle without a backwards glance.

“Your Highness,” Sakura says instead, proffering her hand for Hinata to climb down. Hinata’s answering smile is small, but no less devastating for it.

The ground on Xthunda IV’s northern peninsula is a gleaming, smooth black, a remnant of an immense volcanic explosion that wiped out most of the planet’s civilisations. Most of its population now are nomads, a collection of terraformers and descendents of early colonists.

“Obsidian,” Hinata says, wondering. “I’d heard, but-”

It’s still a fucking sight to behold, Sakura knows: i-Mnetheia, the principal settlement, is a city of shining black rock, carved out of an obsidian valley.

“Your Majesty, Your Imperial Highness,” says Lahuaeiji-Mneth’ior, the planet’s Representative, with two deep bows. “I am honoured to extend my welcome to you both.”

Sakura has met her before, in a way; Lahuaeiji is a military leader, a veteran of the Ōtsutsuki war and the Third Galactic War before it, and Sakura had dug the shrapnel out of her torso on a battlefield some sixty miles from here. There is a white, knotted scar where the rock-flints had come out.

“Captain,” Lahaueiji says, inclining her head. “I see you’ve considered a career change since we last met.”

“I can’t say it was really a considered choice. Things just kind of – happened.”

“ _a-Mwsi vxeilai,_ ” Lahaueiji answers. _The river will run its course._ The last time she said that to Sakura, Sakura was hands deep in her body, awful-slick with so much blood. It’s considerably better to meet under these sorts of circumstances.

“And all things return to the sea,” Sakura answers in standard. “You know how long I’ve been in that shuttle? I hope you have the nicest rooms for us, or I’m going to be really upset.”

“For you, only the best.”

She wasn’t lying: the wing where their party is to stay is as lushly comfortable as a building made of stone can be, thick with bright-woven rugs and blankets. The windows are reinforced against the storms, which have started up again, but the rooms are kept warm as heartsblood by use of firepots and complicated wiring.

Dinner that night is held inside the House’s largest function room, with a gathering of Xthunda IV’s politicians and war heroes.

“I’m starting to feel underdressed,” she confides in Hinata, as they walk through the double-story archway. Sakura had found her newest breeches at the bottom of her suitcase, and a practical brown jacket that she bought after making Captain. Hinata herself is wearing a clinging thing of midnight blue with a spattering of witch-leaf across the torso and a moon-lily behind her ear. Looking at her releases a flood of heat in Sakura’s chest that she is studiously working to ignore.

Hinata glances at her. Her face is flushed; the heat in the House can get unbearable. “You look-” Hinata starts, and stares intently at the ground. “Fine,” Hinata says eventually, when the pause has become too-long.

“I can deal with fine,” Sakura says cheerfully.

Hinata’s face reddens again; Sakura might speak to Lahaueiji about having the temperatures lowered. Alpha Niihara is far more temperate than Xthunda’s wicked extremes.

By virtue of being the Hyūga heiress, Hinata is immediately swallowed into a waiting crowd of dignitaries. Sidestepping around them, Sakura beelines for the nearest corner and hopes no one remembers her. There is a stand of Xthundan pastries and pale green spirit at her elbow. A perfect vantage point, she reasons, and watches Naruto, who’s schmoozing with Xthunda’s junior Representatives. They look as smitten with Naruto as everyone else who has ever met him.

For all his lack of polish, Naruto is a natural charmer: except for this morning, in the shuttle-ride. Sakura isn’t sure what to make of that.  It’s obvious that something, somewhere isn’t quite right- Naruto could make conversation with the stars, or a particularly handsome rock, if the need arose. But then: he wouldn’t have to marry those.

 _I need a pay rise,_ Sakura thinks, and sips from one of the glasses.

“You’ve been in that corner all evening,” Hinata says, her eyes to the left of Sakura’s face. “Are you – really that upset to be here?”

Sakura lowers her glass. It’s only her third of the evening: remarkable restraint, she decides.

“I’m really not a very good diplomat,” she explains. Perhaps, before the war – but her temper now is white-hot and easy to ignite. She has criminal status in the entire Hoshigaki system for throwing their Prime Minister out of a window. Mediation fits her like a child’s glove.

Hinata tilts her chin upwards. “Then don’t say anything likely to cause a galactic scandal.”

“Right,” Sakura says, and follows her out to the floor.

She knows immediately it was a bad idea, because Hinata shifts and suddenly she is Her Imperial Highness, the Heiress to the Empire, and the slope of her neck is regal and lovely. Sakura blinks and feels the hard floor shift beneath her, the tilt of the planet on its axis. “Oh, fuck,” she says to herself.

“-efforts to rebuild our forces after the war have plateaud. We are becoming _complacent_ in victory.”

“It hasn’t even been a year since the war ended,” Hinata says, composed. When she speaks, they all turn to look.

One of the politicians says: “Tensions with the Uchiha are escalating. Rearmament is necessary in-”

Hinata waves the fingers of one hand elegantly.

“I think we all recognise that a war with the Uchiha is unfeasible,” she says. “Neither of us can afford to exhaust our realms that way. The war took more from them than most. Threatening us now would be – pointless.”

“Fugaku of the Uchiha is dead,” another one agrees. “Without him, their territory is unstable at best. There is none of them left except the Sovereign Prince.”

Sakura raises her eyebrows. She hadn’t heard that Sasuke had claimed his right to the Uchiha sovereignty after the war: but then, she hasn’t seen him since she carried him half-dead from the Valley of the End. She wonders if Naruto knows.

 “I heard he’s – you know,” says someone. “ _Disturbed._ ”

Something hot burns through Sakura’s body. “How _dare_ you-” she starts.

“This has no bearing on the conversation,” Hinata interrupts suddenly. She holds the man’s gaze until he drops it. “If you will excuse me-” and she holds her arm out for Sakura to take, watching her expectantly.

Sakura leads them out of the crowd to a quiet bubble by one of the large windows.

“Uh,” she says, and swallows. “Anyone ever tell you you’re really good at your job?”

Hinata flashes a small smile. “It’s what I’ve been raised to do. But – thank you, Captain.”

Sakura can see it: the Imperial bearing in her stature. It’s transformative, and alarmingly attractive. She pushes against the hot sparks of electricity that threaten to surge in her abdomen. Perhaps she shouldn’t have drunk anything at all. Maybe that will be her new rule.

“Are you well?” Hinata asks, in concern.

“Fine,” Sakura says shortly, and scrambles for something else to say. “I can’t imagine ever ruling an Empire, you know.”

Hinata is staring at Sakura’s fingers where they rest over her thigh-strap.

“It’s my birthright,” Hinata says, a little helplessly. “It’s all I was ever born to do.”

Frowning, Sakura says, “Isn’t that a little – restrictive?”

“A little,” Hinata smiles. “My father is a great ruler. He wants the same for me.” Something strange ripples across her face and the mercury-silver pools in her eyes. Hinata says, unprompted: “But I’m going to be _better._ When I become Empress, the branch family won’t be strangers to their own line. No one should have to give their life for me because of their blood.”

Sakura is suddenly certain that she is the only person that Hinata has shared this with, this hot-burning truth.

“You will be,” Sakura says, which seems completely inadequate in the face of Hinata’s unexpected, steady conviction.

Hinata tangles her fingers together. “I hope so, Sakura,” she says, and Sakura is caught in the way that Hinata says her name, the trip of the consonants.

She bears the silence for a few minutes longer before saying, diffidently, “Lahaueiji told me there would be a dancing show tomorrow night. You’ve never seen Xthundan dancers, right?”

“Never,” Hinata says. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Distressingly, so is Sakura: but for the myriad of expressions the performance will put on Hinata’s face, the _shock joy awe_ before she can properly school her face.

“Shouldn’t-” she says, and coughs. “Shouldn’t you be doing this whole diplomat thing with Naruto?”

Hinata’s face shutters abruptly. “It is easier to talk to everyone if we work separately.”

“Well,” Sakura says. “You have me.”

“Do I,” Hinata says, low.

Sakura feels the sudden heat in her stomach flare up again, coiling along her body. She shoots a look at Hinata, but Hinata’s face is a perfect picture of composure. _Stupid,_ she reminds herself; _betrothed._

It’s Sakura who steps away first. “Come on, Your Highness,” she says, forcing it to be light, to be easy. When Hinata walks away, she follows.

\---

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

without you here, I’m basically the most eligible girl in the entire system. you should stay away for longer. you would not believe how many people I’ve had crawling over me since you left. I haven’t gotten laid this much since before the war started.

I hope you know you’re in infovids now. not, like, as yourself, but standing beside Naruto or the Crown Princess. you’ve totally sold us all out for a life of fame. there are about a HUNDRED gossip sites trying to work out who you are. I was gonna defend your honor from all the people saying you were Naruto’s scandalous secret mistress, but Shikamaru stole my tablet while I was laughing.

anyway, Kasai is boring as fuck without you. Shikamaru and Chouji fell into the lake, which I sent you a picture of. Yeah, that’s a custard-frog on Chouji’s head.

come back soon and save me

Ino

 

FROM: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

TO: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

Ino,

We’ve just landed at Minozei Beta. Seeing both suns reminds me of Kasai. I think I accidentally started to miss it more than I planned to, so do something really annoying to remind me why I don’t talk to any of you. Oh, and tell Chouji that if he keeps wearing those FUCKING AMPLIFIERS ALL DAY I WILL BREAK BOTH HIS LEGS

I still don’t know why you think I want to hear about your sex life. I didn’t want to when we were seventeen, and I still don’t want to now. ESPECIALLY when it involves people I know, so if you give me details you’re a dead woman. I’ll get the Duchess on your case.

I have to go now, I’m going to see the glass waterfall with Hinata this evening.

Tell everyone I miss them, but not too much,

Sakura

 

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

what the fuck, sakura. WHAT THE FUCK? HINATA? WHEN DID YOU GET ON FIRST NAME TERMS WITH THE CROWN PRINCESS? I literally cannot believe you.

oh and your cute black-ops friend from the war came out with us last night. I did NOT have him down as a partier but shit, he can drink.

I have requests from like, half the planet to tell you and Naruto that they miss you (for some reason). except Shino, who said: “tell Naruto felicitations in regards to his betrothal.” FUCKING COME HOME ALREADY I HATE FIELDING ALL THESE MESSAGES.

Ino

 

FROM: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

TO: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

Ino,

My job is literally to watch over her all the time. I can’t call her _Your Highness_ every time we speak. You’re so melodramatic.

Please leave Sai alone. Tell him I said you’re a terrible influence.

The Minozei officials are getting on my last nerve. They’re just... everywhere. I swear to the Gods one of them was waiting by my bed this morning when I woke up. I’m going to start sleeping with a blaster under my pillow. It wouldn’t be so bad but the Minozeian states are all at war with each other and the half that don’t want Hinata to make Minozei her new holiday home, want her head on a spike. My hair is about to fall out from stress.

At least the waterfall was pretty. Hinata liked it, too.

Sakura

 

FROM: LT.YAMA.I [KG-121971099732-N-105119111]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

BY. ALL. THE. GODS.

_oh my gods i knew it_

 

FROM: HRH.UZU.N [KG-171200977105-K-119747611]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375], HIP.HYU.H [HE-1041211703097-AN-415197697]

The Minozeian President just like, backed me up into a corner and now we’re attending a state dinner tonight and maybe watch some opera or whatever. I was kinda scared by how emotional he got. But he didn’t cry so I’m willing to sacrifice your evenings!!!!

DRESS NICELY

that’s for you, Sakura and I promise to “DRESS NICELY” too

\- HRH Uzumaki Naruto

 

FROM: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

TO: HIP.HYU.H [HE-1041211703097-AN-415197697]

Hinata,

I am _so fucked_. As if I own any clothes suitable for a Minozeian opera. I’m gonna go bash Naruto’s head into a wall until I won’t be the worst-looking in the room.

Sakura

 

FROM: HIP.HYU.H [HE-1041211703097-AN-415197697]

TO: CP.HARU.S [KG-0726508285078-K-083065375]

You are welcome to borrow any of my dresses if you are uncertain with your own clothes. But I think you are wrong about how you look. I find you look quite lovely no matter what you are wearing.

Hinata

\---

The opera was a total disaster, and not because of Sakura’s practical-if-plain jumpsuit. The Eastern Minozeian faction tampered with the opera house’s wiring so that the entire stage goes up in flames by Act II before attempting to stage a coup. A small, traitorous part of Sakura is glad: Minozeian operas take ten Acts at least to finish. The Eastern Minozeians, who favour exhaustive military rule, get in a few good shots and three shrapnel grenades before Naruto has enough and closes the whole thing down with his blood-given inheritance, skin dappling with flames. This is, of course, when the ion charges on the building’s foundations detonate, and the entire thing begins to crumble to the ground.

Sakura spends the rest of the evening healing spit-shiny burns and picking detritus out of people’s insides. She spends the first few patients convincing herself that this is not, in fact, preferable to a thirty-hour opus.

“So, the opera,” Naruto says. “That was fun, let’s never do that again.”

“For once,” Sakura tells him, “we agree. Don’t think I’m letting you off on your choice of formal-wear.”

Naruto screeches something about saving her life a full two decibels louder than necessary, and flounces off to see if there’s anyone else he can pull from the wreckage. Someone has produced a vid-corder and is filming him lift three times his weight in rubble; another chance for a promotional holoreel, Sakura supposes.

She turns around to find Hinata sitting on the wooden chair that Sakura has requisitioned for her small hospital.

“Is he always so-” Hinata says, and doesn’t finish.

“Yes,” Sakura answers anyway.

At the beginning of the evening, Hinata’s dress had been a glossy black that is now several layers of ash and rubble-dust beyond salvageable. There is a long splinter of metal protruding out of her arm, the cut bleeding in a slow short trickle. Sakura snaps on a new pair of gloves and starts to work.

“I can fix your arm, but the dress is going to be ruined.”

A short, soft sigh: “I am – glad you’re unharmed. I was worried, when the building started to fall.”

“You’d need more than a building to take me out,” Sakura says absent-mindedly. “I had hyper-strength adrenal amplifiers implanted in the last year of the war.”

Hinata makes a noise that Sakura can’t figure out. She focuses back on the gaping wound, the red flesh and the web of broken veins all spilling out the most precious blood in the galaxy; “This is gonna hurt,” she says, grips the splinter and _pulls_ just so, the ripping of the myofascia-

“There,” she says. “You’ll be as good as new once I get you near a regenerator.”

Hinata inspects the stitches carefully. “There’s no need. This is fine.”

“It’ll scar if you leave it like that,” Sakura says, slightly confused.

“I know how skin works.” Hinata fixes her with a look that clearly says Sakura is three steps behind. “Thank you, Sakura.”

One of the Minozeian insurgents had crawled up behind Hinata’s chair in the chaos. Sakura had shot them through the head and throat with the blaster she had strapped to her thigh, _Gods know I won’t need it but I like the weight_ and Sakura is determinedly not thinking about it at all.

Hinata extends one hand towards Sakura. It trembles, which is – it’s _ridiculous,_ and Sakura keeps her eyes on Hinata the entire time she places the kiss even when she feels like the earth under her feet is spinning.

“Captain,” Hinata says: “ _Sakura-_ ”

Before Sakura can reply, a man with burns like fingerprints down his face stumbles over and into the chair.

“I hope you’ve got something to bring back my looks,” he says, peering at Sakura’s face distrustfully, and once Sakura has assured him that she does actually know what the fuck she’s doing, Hinata has gone.

\---

Sakura re-ties her fringe out of her face and attaches her pistol firmly to her thigh. The triple-moon planet of Indriya Oa is famed for its wildflower fields and bluer-than-blue skies. The first, she’s only ever seen in holo-pictures; the second, she comes to appreciate after hauling her body through it’s morning workout, completing a circuit around the villa and then an excruciating series of weights. It was sloppy to go so long without training and her body feels numb and achy with it.

 Even in the morning, the air is sticky-warm, sweat wet on the back of her neck. The air on this planet is sweet and fragrant, even if the shift in gravity makes her feel heavy. She’s sore with it.

“Sakura!” Naruto’s voice calls.

“You’re actually awake before twelve,” Sakura says. “Hold me, I’m about to pass out.”

Naruto frowns. “You’re not half as funny as you think you are.”

“I think you’re forgetting that I have access to all of your disgusting childhood photos.”

“And _you’re_ forgetting that I’m not actually ashamed of any of those,” Naruto points out. The worst part of it is, he’s sincere about it. “Anyway, Hinata wanted to see you later. You two got pretty close, huh?”

Sakura doesn’t have time to work out the dip in cadence of Naruto’s voice.

“I guess so,” she edges. Probably Naruto will chalk it up to some sort of inherent feminine compatibility, something inexplicable and unexplainable.

After a short detour to shower and change, and another ten minutes in which she has to prove her credibility to the Indriyaan guards stationed outside of the Crown Princess’s door, Sakura makes it to Hinata’s suite.

“If you’re worried about another assassination attempt,” she says, “I think these guards took my warnings to heart.”

Hinata’s smile when Sakura walks in seems real enough. “I thought we might take one of the landspeeders out,” she says hesitantly. “My father says that the Soshindi plains are a natural wonder.”

“Sure,” Sakura agrees easily, not caring at the hot flush of warmth that Hinata’s smile stirs up.

The Indriyaan First Minister is all too pleased to offer them the use of one of his speeders for the day, bowing graciously even when he asks _isn’t His Majesty coming with you_ with his sharp eyes.

“His Majesty has other matters to attend to,” Sakura answers, running her hand over the speeder’s bonnet. “But I’m sure he would thank you for your concern.”

This speeder isn’t quite as fine as the one from the Hyūga fleet, but it’s not loud enough to stop them talking. Even so, the drive is quiet: Hinata seems content to look out at the flowers blurring as they drive past in bright, liquid ribbons. It would be almost unpleasantly warm if they were walking, and Sakura slows the speeder down enough to get an idea of the view.

Hinata rests her head on the speeder’s door and stares out at the fields, her profile hazily-silhouetted against the white-glare of the sun. The ground here is an explosion of wildflowers; an epithelium of colour that stretches out for as far as Sakura can see. She doesn’t look away from Hinata. The whorls of her hair. The sharp upwards tilt of her nose.

“Are we gonna talk about this?” she blurts out.

Frowning, Hinata asks, “About what?” Is Sakura imagining it? The silk-whisper of shock, of anticipation?

“Okay,” Sakura says. It’s mostly to herself. “Okay,” she repeats.

“Are you feeling ill?” Hinata asks nervously. “I can’t drive us back-”

 “I will really appreciate it if you don’t do something hasty, like having me executed.”

“Executions really don’t come under my authority,” Hinata is saying, when Sakura screws up the last of her courage that wasn’t eaten up by the war, and lands a kiss on the corner of Hinata’s mouth. She pulls back immediately, for all she was the one who wanted this, who started it.

Hinata’s eyes are very wide. Before Sakura can pull herself together enough to do something foolish, like cry, or even sensible, like apologise, Hinata whispers, “Well, finally,” and presses a kiss against Sakura’s lips, fingers resting against Sakura’s jaw with unbearable gentleness before Sakura pulls away, bowing her head so her mouth traces the words into Hinata’s skin. She smells like cut grass and rain.

“You were _waiting_?” she says, aggrieved.

“I can’t go around just kissing my subordinates,” Hinata answers, breath warm against Sakura’s neck. “I’m a Crown Princess. It’s really quite frowned upon.”

Sakura opens her mouth to say _that’s such horseshit_ when Hinata says, “Besides. I wasn’t sure – if you felt this too.”

She’s reminded of the Lake on Alpha Niihara: the feeling of being caught in the centre of a space-storm, only now the feeling is tenfold, an electric current running through her entire body.

“Yeah,” she says. “I feel it too.”

\---

The Indriyaan government hold a banquet to celebrate the last night of hosting the King of Konohagakure and the Crown Princess of the Hyūga Empire. There hasn’t been such an honour for their planet since their joining the Empire some two hundred years ago, one of the diplomatic aides had told her last night: their planet generates little benefit for the Empire. It’s a planet of farmers, mostly, and one of the few to remain untouched by the Fourth Intergalactic War.

“I am gratified that your Majesty and Your Imperial Highness would choose to visit us,” the First Minister is saying.

Naruto, looking uncomfortably starched in long red robes, mumbles something about the Indriyaans hospitality and grace. It’s Hinata who answers: “I requested to come here,” she says.

“We thank you, Your Highness,” the First Minister replies. “If I may inquire as to the reason?”

Hinata smiles. “Your planet’s grasslands are quite famous, Minister. And my Guard has an – interest, in flowers.”

Sometimes, when she’s least expecting it, Hinata knocks the very breath out of Sakura. It’s almost impossible to reconcile Her Imperial Majesty with this earnest girl who wanted to show Sakura Indriya Oa’s flower-fields. Who requested the blooms of a dead planet at her engagement ceremony.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sakura admits. The Indriyaan politicians have all levelled their gaze on her. “It’s more of a – second-hand knowledge.”

“You underestimate yourself,” Hinata says.

“And you think too much of me,” Sakura says with deliberate courtesy. Hinata’s eyes flicker with something unnameable.

Naruto narrows his eyes, but steers the conversation back. “The Captian’s Lieutenant was a botanist before the War. She was a lot better at remembering it all than I was.”

“And did you find the fields to your liking, Your Highness?”

When she speaks, Hinata’s voice is perfectly decorous. She holds Sakura’s gaze. “Yes,” she says. “They were.”

Later, the Indriyaan guards lead the party through to a large ballroom with a sugarglass-domed ceiling. Around the circumference of the room are these incredible sculptures formed out of flowers, taller than Sakura is and incredible to behold.

The first dance is reserved for Naruto and Hinata, as the affianced. The dance is completely demure and they keep a wedge of space between them at all times. It looks, Sakura muses, like a dance between two complete strangers. Afterwards, Naruto dances with one of the Indriyaan ministers, and then one of the aides, and then a local luminary before flopping down into the seat next to Sakura.

“This diplomacy thing is a crock of shit,” Naruto drawls.

Sakura shrugs and keeps looking at where Hinata is discussing a possible trade route between Indriya Oa and the planets of the Centre Rim.

“It’s your job now, if you hadn’t noticed, _Your Majesty._ ”

“I will have you banned from at least three planets if you don’t stop that,” Naruto threatens. “I’m glad this tour is gonna be over, at least.”

“What,” Sakura says distractedly, before it hits home that Indriya Oa is the last stop on the _royal betrothal circuit_ , as Naruto insists on calling it.

Naruto shoots her a look. “Do you even want to go back?” he asks. His face is uncharacteristically serious, and it doesn’t suit him at all.

“Well,” Sakura temporizes, and swallows some of her wine.

“Are you – actually _enjoying_ this? After all the shit you gave me when I nominated you?” Naruto demands, and snatches her glass away.

Sakura makes a face. “Sorry, honey. Next time I’ll trust your noble wisdom.” She tugs at her jacket sleeve. “Anyway, you know what it’s like to – want to keep moving. After the war. It’s hard to just stay still.”

“Remember when we used to pretend we lived in the Kasai palace?” Naruto asks quietly. “We were so – young. Didn’t want anything more than to stay in one place.”

“War happened,” Sakura says. “We’re both a little crazy now.”

She feels Naruto’s prosthetic hand grip hers, heavy and cool. _Sam’yoou,_ he’d called it back then. Wanderlust.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she mutters. “Ino says half the galaxy thinks I’m your lover.”

“Oh, _do they,”_ Naruto says, eyes gleaming. “Well, I always knew the truth would have to come out someday. Maybe we should just stop hiding it.”

His face edges towards hers to try and land a clumsy kiss on her cheek that she neatly dodges.

“Please stop talking,” Sakura says with calculated disgust, and spends the rest of the evening attempting to dodge Naruto’s romantic advances.

By the end of the night, Sakura is sure that Naruto has exhausted his need to make a spectacle of himself for at least the next two months, for which she’s sure that his PR team will be monumentally grateful. She leads Hinata back to her suite with a small cluster of guards attempting to be unobtrusive a couple of feet behind them.

“I hope your evening was – enjoyable?” Hinata asks dubiously, and low enough that no one can overhear.

Sakura sighs. “No one died, so on balance, I guess it was.”

“Your standards for a good time are worryingly low.” Hinata gives her a long, long look before redirecting her gaze to the wood-carved corridor.

“I like to think they allow me to be pleasantly surprised,” Sakura counters.

They come to a stop outside of the large bluewood door to Hinata’s rooms. The guards, mercifully, have disappeared to stand guard outside of this corridor.

Sakura dips her head to press a chaste kiss against Hinata’s mouth. Nothing more than a brief impression of another mouth on hers, and then she pulls back.

“Goodnight,” she says, with deliberate politeness.

She’s four steps down the corridor before Hinata calls out, “Sakura.”

Sakura turns to face her expectantly. Hinata’s eyes are wide and serious. “You could stay, if you wanted.”

Something releases inside Sakura’s chest in a hot-wet flood that trickles right down to her fingertips. Tonight, Hinata’s hair is half up in complex braids, threaded through with small purple stones. She’s so lovely that it’s almost excruciating to look at her.

“That’s probably-” Sakura says anyway, and swallows. “-a really bad idea.”

“Yes,” Hinata agrees.

They stare at each other. Suddenly the four steps between them seem like an entire gulf.

“You’re betrothed,” Sakura points out. Someone has to say it, she figures. It might as well be her.

“Really?” Hinata asks demurely. “It had escaped my notice.”

Sakura bites down heavily on the fleshy inside of her cheek to hide her smile, which is a colossal failure. Hinata keeps looking at her, silently expecting. The corridor here is dark, and imbues her with a twilight shroud, the beads in her hair glinting dully off the light.

“I really can’t think of anything else,” Sakura admits, and closes the gap.

Hinata’s fingertips press into Sakura’s jaw, constellating like pin-pricks on the join where Sakura’s shoulder meets her neck, and tilts her head up for Sakura’s kiss. She murmurs into Sakura’s mouth, “Thank the Goddesses for that.”

Sakura chases Hinata’s mouth, stepping backwards into the room, some strange sensation sparking off her tongue. Hinata curves like a bow, body thrumming against Sakura’s, and gasps when Sakura traces her mouth down Hinata’s neck and across the dip between her collarbones. They’ve reached the bed, somehow: Hinata’s hands are tight in the sheets, long-fingered and delicate.

The room is spinning hazily. “Are you sure?”  Sakura asks.

“Of you,” Hinata answers: “always.” A dull red flush begins to spread down from her cheekbones to her neck. Sakura kisses her again, presses her back into the spun-silk sheets. All this, and Sakura still wants to touch her so much it aches. She swallows one of Hinata’s choked half-noises with her own mouth.

Hinata murmurs something and Sakura moves lower, mouth trailing across the stretch of Hinata’s stomach. She can feel Hinata’s body trembling and drags her teeth gently over the curve of Hinata’s hipbone.

Raising her head, Sakura takes in the sight of her, Hinata’s hair oil-black on the sheets and the gentle spray of her eyelashes. The blush reaches down to her chest and Sakura wants to kiss her, and keep kissing her, and perhaps never stop, which is a feeling altogether unexpected in its intensity.

She breathes shakily against Hinata’s skin. The room is getting – hot, like a white-sand desert, and Sakura still has all her clothes on, which seems like a terrible shame.

“I could look at you all day,” Sakura whispers, her calloused fingers on Hinata’s thighs.

Hinata makes some new noise, eyes lowering, but she says, “I hope you’re going to do more than just look.”

“I am,” Sakura says, “trust me,” dipping her head down and – _there,_ Hinata’s hands sudden and scorching on Sakura’s shoulders.

“I do,” Hinata says, so softly Sakura almost doesn’t hear. The entire universe has shrunk down to this small room, to the map of Hinata’s body under Sakura’s hands and tongue, and the heat blooming in her stomach is a sun imploding, burning her to the tips of her fingers, pulling her in.

\---

Their arrival back on Alpha Niihara is waylaid by a refuelling stop at a station in orbit around the gas-planet of Solvyyv B, which escalates into a repair stop when the dilithium drive’s external relays begin to overload and the shuttle begins to smoke.

“Bar,” Naruto says as soon as she’s stepped off and linking his arm through hers.

Sakura doesn’t even try to tug away: Naruto is too-thin but with a core of solid steel.

“I’m not leaving Hinata on here by herself,” she whispers furiously. “Are you _trying_ to start a diplomatic incident by getting your fiancé _killed,_ by the _Gods-_ ”

“Then bring her along, I don’t care,” Naruto says, and starts to pull her away.

The d’Faonni station is only a little large than the span of Sakura’s hand, but not by much. It takes them less than five minutes to cross from the docks to the visitor centre and locate the station’s only cantina, signposted by a fluorescent red notice above the door. Naruto bypasses his usual seat up by the bar and sits them down instead in one of the tiny booths. The table is sticky with old residue. There’s a long black score from someone’s pistol down the middle and a knife stuck into the wall above the bar.

“Charming,” Sakura says dryly, and levels a flat stare at Naruto. “This better be good, Uzumaki.”

Naruto winces.

He says, “You might want to order your drink first.”

“I’m pretty sure this place only serves piss and Lower Sector dusk-spirit.”

“And I’m telling you,” Naruto says. His eyes are alarmingly shifty. “You’re gonna want to order your drink first.”

The barman, a guy with metal implants up his arms and a shock of green hair, hands over their orders with a more than suspicious look at Naruto and Hinata’s richly-embroidered clothes. Sakura unholsters her pistol and places it on the table in front of her.

As she expected, the spirit here tastes like cat’s piss. She grimaces but swallows it down anyway.

“Is it – safe?” Hinata asks, inspecting the glass in front of her. The drink is a vaguely nauseating, viscous blue – _something._ It’s highly unlikely that any anti-Hyūga rebels would be working on an out-of-the-way station so far from their capital planet; it’s even more unlikely that anyone would expect to see the Hyūga heiress in a dive like this.

“Don’t drink it,” Sakura says anyway. Just to be sure.

Across from them, Naruto shifts guiltily. “Okay,” he mutters. “First of all, I want you to promise not to punch me.”

Sakura narrows her eyes.

“No deal,” she answers.

Naruto deflates. “It was worth a try, anyway.”

“Naruto,” Sakura says calmly, which is usually how she tries to sound when she’s five seconds away from blowing her top. “You better start explaining _right fucking now_ , and it better be _good,_ or I’m gonna kick your ass from one end of this galaxy to the next, and then I’m gonna do it all over again.”

It takes a minute, but finally Naruto sighs and hangs his head. He says something so quietly that Sakura’s ears, half-deafened after years on the frontlines, can’t catch.

“What?”

With a deep breath, Naruto says: “I – kind of – want to dissolve the contract.”

Sakura hisses, “What the _motherfuck_ ,” at the same time that Hinata asks, “Which one?”

She turns to look blankly at Hinata, who’s sitting there sedately with her hand in her lap.

“What?” Hinata says defensively. “I’ve signed a lot of contracts in my life.”

Across from them, Naruto somehow manages to look even more hangdog than he did a minute before.

“The betrothal contract,” he says, face bright red.

There’s a sudden roaring in Sakura’s ears, loud enough that she’s stunned to realise no one else can hear it, that it exists only in her head. “ _You,_ ” she snarls, “are such a fucking _moron_! The betrothal contract was _your idea_ in the first place!”

“Not really _,”_ Naruto insists. “Most of it was the Emperor, and my Council.”

She’s prepared to lunge across the table and plant her fist in Naruto’s face, but the sudden ghost-touch of Hinata’s hand on her wrist stops her. Sakura knows those fingers. Has kissed those fingers, and that mouth. When she glances up, Hinata’s eyes are gentle.

Sakura takes a deep breath, infinitely glad for all her practice at spilling her anger into a bizarre focus-calm. She wonders how Naruto could’ve decided all this right in front of her, that she never noticed. Her eyes start to give a tell-tale prickle that she forces back down.

 “Fuck,” she mutters. “Why are you telling us _now_?”

Naruto rubs tiredly at his eyes. When he speaks, it’s to Hinata. “I know you don’t want this,” he says. “We’d be _fine,_ together, I guess. Which is more than some people get. But making you go through with it isn’t fair.”

“You would have me marry for love?” Hinata asks softly.

A dull, red flush starts to leak across Naruto’s cheeks. “I know it’s not fucking _proper,_ or whatever. I’m not really good at that kind of thing, anyway.”

“No,” Hinata muses, “I think this will make you a better king.”

The redness begins to spread down Naruto’s neck, even as he gives a face-splitting grin.

“That’s all turned out alright, then,” he says sheepishly, and props his hands behind his head, surveying the both of them. Sakura becomes uncomfortably aware of the space, or lack thereof, between her and Hinata, and takes a cautious sip of her drink to hide her face. “So I can tell Sasuke to call off the Uchiha armada of battlecruisers, yeah?”

“ _Battlecruisers_?” Sakura shouts, louder than she meant to, and then: “ _Sasuke?_ ”

Hinata clears her throat: “Actually,” she says.

\---

The thing about Hyūga paranoia is that it never lets up for one fucking second. Naruto had told her that when Hyūga Neji had fallen, the biotic implant equipped within Hyūgas had immediately activated and crumbled his eyes to dust. As far as Sakura can remember, the Hyūga are the only clan to practice such a thing. It’s a precaution she’d thought left abandoned to history.

“Blood contracts,” Hinata explains, “are very difficult to get out of,” which is certainly one way of putting it. No one has used blood contracts for nuptials in hundreds of years: Sakura had thought the use of them at the betrothal ceremony a sort of overblown formality.

“Sure,” Naruto agrees. “Where’s the fun in actually having it being easy once in a while?”

Hinata frowns at him with what Sakura thinks might be her strongest intensity. Which, if Sakura is honest, isn’t all that intense.

“Only blood can counter blood,” she continues. “No one has – broken with a blood contract in centuries.”

“No one’s _formed_ a blood contract in centuries,” Sakura protests.

“Haven’t they?” Hinata asks curiously.

Cutting them off, Naruto leans forward and almost topples his drink. “You don’t have to call it off,” he says. He sounds strained. “I’m not going to – stab you, or whatever.”

If Naruto takes the time to ask for something, instead of just _taking_ , it’s important to him. Sakura has known this for most of her life, like she knows the exact place to cut into a body, or the number of bones in her hand. He’d asked for her friendship, back in Kasai’s training camps; he’d asked her to keep herself safe, before Datara. He’d asked her to save Sasuke’s life, after the fight at the Valley of the End. He’s asking now to be cut loose from his word, if only less straightforward.

“Thankfully, I don’t want to be stabbed any more than you want to do it.”

 Hinata’s hand brushes hotly against hers. Sakura’s grip tightens on the metal of the table-leg. The shape of her at Sakura’s side, one hand propped on the table to rest her head, is like a half-remembered dream: something she can’t think of beyond the ache of wanting and not having. Sakura resists the temptation to think of what this means, what it could mean.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks suddenly.

Naruto lowers his eyes to the table and then up to her face. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve never – it’s always been him.”

Against herself, Sakura feels the tight edges of her mouth start to pull up.

“You couldn’t just fall in love with someone _useful,_ could you?” she sighs, but grips his metal hand in her own.

Hinata glances between the two of them. “The only way to break a contract of this type is to replace it with a new one. A challenger for your hand in marriage, I suppose you could say.” There’s something different in her air: an iron grace, a sort of solidity suffusing her entire body. Sakura burns to touch her.

“No,” Sakura says.

Naruto shrugs with careful indifference. “It won’t be so bad. He doesn’t know, anyway.”

Personally, Sakura is sure that by now, most of charted space is aware of how long and how intensely Naruto has been in love with Uchiha Sasuke, but she lets it slide.

“First, you need a challenger,” Hinata says. “Only blood can counter blood.”

Naruto’s face slips into gravity.  He says, with the steel-edge of royalty to his tone, “What do you need us to do?”

\---

The second time that Sakura visits the Imperial Court of the Hyūga Empire is considerably different to the first time. It’s inside, for one, because Alpha Niihara is a planet of long, biting winters with barely a week for summer. She’d been prepared for a crowd, but her remark on the emptiness of the halls crawls back down her throat when she sees the entirety of this sector’s peerage gathered to watch the Sovereign Prince of the Uchiha do battle for the dubious honour of Naruto’s hand.

Most have collected inside the grand hall of the State Rooms, which has been cleared of all its furniture to create a sort of clearing in the centre that everyone is studiously avoiding. The room, in the fashion of the Hyūga aristocracy, is large and airy, with furiously detailed carvings running up the walls and across the high ceiling. On the far wall are large tapestries of former Imperial rulers staring down at the crowd. Sakura can’t help the shiver that passes through her body like a mist.

Someone has enterprisingly set up a holo-barrier to discourage stepping into the ring. Yet another has provided hovering plates of hors d'oeuvres and small glasses of rich blue wine. The general air would be one of a party (albeit one altogether different from the ones Sakura used to attend, which were considerably less well-behaved) if not for the rest of the Imperial family perched on thrones, across the room from the entrance.

A wave of whispers follows them as they make their way to the dais. The Hyūga Emperor watches them expressionlessly, fully decked out in luminous white robes, haori so beautifully embroidered it takes Sakura’s breath away. _Emperor_ resurges in her mind, _leader of an Empire._

“Hinata,” he says when they reach him. “This is an unfortunate circumstance.”

Sakura blinks. It’s certainly an understatement, she thinks. This duel will put them at risk of war. The Emperor glances at Naruto, and then at Sakura herself. She keeps her head upright and proud. She has punched the matriarch of the Ōtsutsuki: she can hold this man’s gaze.

“Captain Haruno will be acting as my Champion,” Hinata explains. Her voice wavers a little. “Has-”

“The Uchiha has not arrived.”

Sakura manages to neither shift her expression nor pull Naruto into an untimely hug. If this whole ordeal is playing her nerves like strings, then she can only imagine that it’s so much the worse for Naruto. As Sakura watches, Naruto lifts his head even further, his blood-given royalty settling over him like a star-spun shroud. She remembers when Naruto first took the throne, how Tsunade had said, _he’s too unsure - but he has the potential._ Looking at him now, Naruto’s birthright has never been plainer.

The look he directs at Hiashi is thoughtful. “I’m sorry for the trouble this is causing your family.”

“Are you?” the Emperor rejoins. “I would think that if you were so sorry, you wouldn’t be going through with this spectacle.”

“Respectfully, your Highness,” Naruto says, “it wasn’t completely my idea.”

Sakura only catches the beginnings of the red flush spilling across Hinata’s cheeks before the doors burst open with a clap and Sasuke strides in with that familiar proud, predatory gait. The entire room falls to a hush: whatever Sakura had thought of the stares before, they are nothing to the looks given to Sasuke, almost heavy enough to be a solid thing.

“I hope you weren’t all waiting for me.” Sasuke doesn’t bow: either his temperament hasn’t changed after all this time, or the Uchiha territory is either stronger than anyone has suspected.

The Emperor frowns heavily. He says, “Your Serene Highness.”

It’s altogether unsurprising how little Sasuke has changed: a glare like a supernova and disastrously messy back hair like an oilspill over his shoulders. This is precisely how Sakura remembers him, the confident line of his profile against the white walls, the set of his mouth.

As she watches, a hollow feeling takes root in Sakura’s stomach. Sasuke had been the one constant in her life for so long, an unattainable, unreachable distant star, that she’s stunned to realise she doesn’t feel anything for him at all beyond the indifference of a familiar stranger.

“Can we get this underway, then?”

Sakura’s eyes snap back to the Emperor, who nods with apparent unconcern. “Begin when you’re ready.”

“Are you sure about this?” Hinata asks worriedly. Her fingers work at a loose seam in her dress.

Sakura fights down the urge to push an errant slip of Hinata’s hair back behind her ear. She’s peripherally aware of the crowd watching them.

“I’m sure about _you,_ ” she says with a grin.

“Don’t be silly,” Hinata tells her, but blushes prettily. “Your sword is charged?”

“Yes,” Sakura replies. “I am actually a professional, you know.”

Hinata bites down on her lip. “Not a professional duellist, though.”

Someone over by the dais rings a gong with enough force to send Sakura’s head spinning. Everyone migrates to the area around the impromptu holo-barrier in near-silence. Sakura thinks she recognises the King of Suna by one of the plates. A few feet away, Naruto is whispering furiously to Sasuke, who doesn’t react beyond a muscle jumping in his jaw.

She steps up to the edge of the ring with a tight breath.

“I know you can do this,” Hinata says in an undertone.

Sakura nods. She reaches out to catch Hinata’s hand and raise it to her lips, pressing a kiss there firmly. “Wish me luck,” she whispers.

Hinata’s cheeks flame up like a sunset. She says, “I can do better than that,” and places her hands either side of Sakura’s face to tug her down –

It’s short, and chaste, only long enough for Sakura to register that it’s even happened before Hinata is stepping back. She blinks, ungainly and slow, half-resisting the urge to lean back into Hinata’s space, follow the softness of her hair and lips.

“Good luck,” Hinata tells her softly. Her hands press over Sakura’s where they rest on her borrowed sword. Sakura nods, again, and steps fully inside the ring.

Sasuke is facing her, short-wave energy sword unsheathed. His stance is beautifully balanced, the sword a natural growth out of his arm, Sharingan eye whirling. During the worst of the war, Sakura had been stationed on the volcanic planet of Soshinxa Rax for three cycles of its largest moon. Looking at his eyes now reminds her of that planet’s boiling lava pits, ribbons of molten crimson and burnt-black under her feet. She holds his eye, even though she’s never wanted anything more than to look away.

“To first blood,” someone’s voice announces, and, “Begin!”

It’s immediately clear that the Prince of the Uchiha is in an entirely different league as soon as their blades cross. Sakura had known this, from all their fights during the war, but the inescapable fact of it suddenly crashes down on her again. They exchange blows and parries, swords shrieking. Sakura grits her teeth, and angles her body just so – _pushes_ against the weight of him, sends him stumbling backwards. Her strength implants activate, prompted by the sudden rush of adrenaline. She parries his next blow, but the next one forces her on the defensive, their feet moving counterpoint.

She redirects her strength to her legs and whirls into a low kick that knocks him to the floor; or it _should,_ but he twists and lands back on his feet, unnatural catlike grace. He settles back into his opening stance, feet apart and waiting. Breathing heavily, Sakura centres her strength in her hands and fingers, careful not to crush the sword’s hilt.

The Prince attacks first, a solar-storm of fast, livid strikes that press Sakura into the corner of the ring.  She doesn’t know of anyone else who can use a sword like this; it’s an art rendered almost useless by energy weapons, but in his hands –

Sakura clenches her jaw and breaks the lock. Where he should falter, he reels the motion in and strikes out, _away,_ and his blade skims along her arm.

Ignoring the sudden silence in the room, Sakura looks down. The cut is only shallow but is seeping blood steadily. She powers down her sword and flicks her sweaty hair out of her face.

“Thank the Gods,” she says, and laughs.

Across from them, over on the dais, the Emperor is frowning, but he can’t argue with the reality of Sakura’s blood, trickling down to her elbow. _Only blood can counter blood,_ Hinata had said, and this is how.

Naruto joins them, with typical disregard for custom. He begins to rudimentarily patch up the slick red line on Sakura’s arm. “Very convincing, Captain,” he says.

“I haven’t used a sword since junior training.”

Sasuke looks unconcerned. “It showed. I was told to _go easy on you._ ”

Darkly, Sakura clenches her hand into a fist and reminds herself of the myriad reasons that punching Uchiha Sasuke through the floor would be a terrible diplomatic move.

Naruto beams at them both. “It actually _worked!_ I can’t believe it. I was pretty sure we’d get found out.”

“I can,” Sakura tells him. “For a start, it wasn’t your plan.”

“She’s right,” Sasuke agrees flatly, and Sakura stares at him, mind free-wheeling. Sasuke’s hand is still resting, she notices, over his sword hilt, bloody red eyes jumping from person to person, body angled to place Naruto behind him.

Sakura narrows her eyes. She wonders, thoughtfully, if Naruto has been wrong this entire time.

“What are you looking so funny about?” Naruto asks. He looks cagey.

“You,” she says honestly. “Naruto – you know you’re still engaged, now.”

Naruto’s shrugs and scuffs his foot. “Yeah, yeah,” he tells her cheerfully. “You worry too much, Sakura. You’re going to get wrinkles if you don’t stop.”

Sasuke is watching them both. He looks, if Sakura had to put a name to it, perplexed. Now that she has a chance to look closer, the details of his face are changed, like a dream remembered wrongly. “We could – just cancel it. If you wanted,” he says.

Naruto mutters, cheeks flushed, “Yeah, well. We need to make it look a _little_ real, first.”

The look on Sasuke’s face blurs and shifts. Sakura places a hand over her mouth before thinking the better of it.

“For the Gods’ sakes,” she snaps, and slaps them both around the head.

There’s a sudden presence at Sakura’s side. Hinata smiles, small and lovely, starlight spilling out. “The contract is broken,” she tells them.

“Already?” Naruto asks. “I thought there’d be more to it. A ceremony, or something.”

Sakura rolls her eyes. “You might not have noticed, but we just had an entire duel about it. It was sort of a big deal.”

Naruto ignores her. His gaze is fixed on Hinata, thoughtful.

“You’re really going to get into shit for this,” he says. “I don’t care what they say about me, but I care about _her_ , so you better take care of her.”

It takes a moment to settle, but Sakura feels something tighten in her chest. “Naruto,” she says.

“Well, it’s true!” Naruto says, eyes suspiciously shiny. “And no one else is gonna dare to say it!”

“Naruto,” Hinata says softly. It’s strange to see her here, back in her family’s home. “Thank you for doing this.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Naruto blusters, but he suddenly leans forward to pull Hinata into a hug that ends almost as soon as it begins. “C’mon, Sasuke, let’s go make nice with some fucking politicians. And try and look like you’re enjoying it.”

One glance at Sasuke’s face tells Sakura immediately that Sasuke will do no such thing. She watches them go with a little mock bow.

 “Sakura,” Hinata says. “I’ve convinced my father that having a bounty placed on your head would be a grave mistake.”

“I didn’t even know that was a possibility,” Sakura says. She looks over to the Emperor, who doesn’t at all look like a man just turned away from murder. But: “How?”

Hinata’s eyes are wide and quicksilver-bright. “He asked me to choose,” she explains, after a pause. Her gaze wanders from Sakura’s eyes to her mouth, and up again. “He asked – which I would rather have; the Empire, or my Imperial Guard.”

“Oh,” Sakura says, sudden and breathless. “And – which did you choose, then?”

Hinata reaches up and kisses her, her hand light on the back of Sakura’s neck. It feels like the blade through her skin had felt, a sharp sting dissolving into sweetness; the steady swell of waves against the nighttime shore.

“You,” Hinata says.

\---

“What do you mean you’re going back?” Ino asks, eyes wide.

“After the betrothal contract was broken, the original term of my employment was extended,” Sakura explains. “Besides, I’m lucky to have a job at all.”

Sure enough, Hinata had decided that she’d rather have Sakura than be Empress of the Hyūga. Sakura is unspeakably thankful that Hiashi had decided not to immediately expel them both as criminals of the Empire.

“You could always come visit me,” Sakura suggests. “There’s probably _someone_ on Alpha Niihari who wouldn’t be entirely repulsed by your personality.”

“Oh, that’s cute. You’re really unbearable since you starting seeing that princess,” Ino says, but her face is pinched and tight. Sakura becomes increasingly worried that Ino will do something awful, like cry, and Sakura will have no choice but to join in.

“Don’t you dare,” she tells Ino fiercely. “I’m only a few days’ shuttle away. You could even make a proper holiday of it. God knows you need it. All this stress is really starting to age you early.”

Ino abandons all pretence of watching over the shop and flings her arms around Sakura’s neck, fingers digging in. “You better believe it, Haruno,” and Sakura’s lower mouth starts to tremble, a sure sign of tears to come, until Ino shrieks when Sakura hugs her back: “Sakura! Ow, ow, get off me!”

Sakura quickly relinquishes her hold. “Sorry,” she says guiltily. No matter how long she’s worn the implants, sometimes she forgets that she can crush rocks to spacedust with her hands.

“I’ll be seeing you, Haruno.” A wicked grin starts to split Ino’s face. “Unless you want to bring your princess over _here–”_

Already walking out the door, Sakura calls back, “Not happening!” but Ino keeps laughing regardless.

After her conversation with Ino, Sakura heads into the hub of the city. Kasai’s seat of power is a squat tower building sprouting out of the city’s centre, and it’s old as dirt, giving the general impression that everything else simply sprung up around it, a sort of gravitational pull.

All of the guards inside seem caught between twin tides of either saluting, or bowing. Sakura hides her smile behind her hand and nods formally at all of them, before one of them manages to strain themselves.

“You’re confusing my soldiers,” Naruto accuses as soon as she walks into his office.

“It’s not my fault,” Sakura says calmly. “They’re just unnerved that they don’t know my rank anymore. They’ve never met an Imperial Guard before.”

 “More woe them,” Naruto replies darkly.

Before, she had been a Captain of the Konoha Forces, an undisputed leader of the Medical Corps; now, somehow, she’s Commander of the Hyūga Imperial Guard, the former Crown Princess’s chosen protector. They were lucky that, in the face of Naruto’s supposed sudden and scandalous whirlwind romance with the Uchiha Sovereign, Hinata’s impulsive kiss had been almost completely eclipsed.

Naruto drums his fingers on his disgustingly ostentatious desk. He says, “You’re leaving today, then.”

“As soon as my shuttle reaches the docks.”

Stretching lazily, Naruto tugs her over to his chair and doesn’t resist at all when she rests her hands on the top of his head. His hair, as always, is deceptively wiry and fills her hands like sunshine.

“If she upsets you, I can always declare war on the whole lot of them.” Naruto tips his head up to wink at her salaciously. “Don’t you worry, Commander.”

“Please don’t talk about starting any wars,” Sakura asks him.

Naruto laughs. “Tsunade would kick my ass.”

“She really would,” Sakura allows. For the first time, she’s relatively certain that everything will be fine without her. That everything will carry on, only a little changed.

“Don’t you start crying on me,” Naruto says. Sakura gapes at him: Naruto, who bawls at mangy desert-dog holos, old photos and once, memorably, a particularly solitary tree. Naruto, apparently oblivious to his own profound hypocrisy, carries on, “I’ve already had Ino in here, threatening me to make you stay. She made my guards cry. It’s really becoming an issue.”

“Not my fucking problem,” Sakura tells him.

“Liar,” Naruto says, smiling, and: “Go on, get out of my office, Shikamaru’s gonna be here in five for an intelligence debrief.”

Sakura grins, and ducks down to press a kiss to his cheek. “Stay out of trouble,” she says, and Naruto laughs.

\---

The suite of rooms designated to the Crown Princess’s Imperial Guard is unspeakably luxurious, and most likely larger than an entire floor of the apartment complex Sakura had lived in on Kasai. She had been entirely prepared to hector the housekeeping sector into giving her a more modest accommodation until she’d seen the bed, button-round and piled with cushions.

“I’ll take it,” she’d told Hinata, who’d smiled in delight. Hinata, who is half asleep now, facing Sakura like a parenthesis, her dark hair spilling across the pillows and a new, warm smile on her mouth. Sakura leans forward and captures her in a kiss, again, because she can. She can’t imagine ever tiring of it.

Hinata sighs, and twists to better work her way into Sakura’s mouth. Her fingers trace down Sakura’s neck, the dark lines of the tattoos that cover her implants, and Sakura shivers, pulse jumping in her carotid. She kisses Hinata until time starts to unspool away from her; wandering, aimless kisses that go nowhere, a steady burst of warmth that spreads throughout Sakura’s body, the slide of the sheets dissolving into the sensation of Hinata’s mouth, the feel of her skin under Sakura’s fingertips.

Something Sakura has learned: Hinata is quiet, even here. Sometimes her breath hitches, or she lets out a half-noise before she can trap it. Sakura is already addicted to the need to have Hinata slip up in her control, even for a moment. She bites into the kiss, her hands purposeful on the curve of Hinata’s hip, before pulling away.

“I was talking to Tenten earlier,” Sakura says. “The Minozeian revolt has settled down again, and they’ve elected a new President. He’s from the North, so unlikely to try and swarm us in the night, which is always nice.”

“Nobody is going to swarm us in the night.”

Sakura says, blank-faced, “Your safety is my priority.”

“I would ask you to stop saying that,” Hinata says, “but I don’t think it would have any effect.”

The Exalted Oath of the Hyūga Guard had been Sakura’s only reading material for the entire trip to Alpha Niihari and she has, consequently, become intimately familiar with its contents. Never one to waste an opportunity, she’s thinking of using it to manhandle the Emperor into introducing requisite first-aid training for all guards, beyond the use of disposable regenerators.

Sakura rolls over and twists one finger, considering, in Hinata’s hair. “I think she’s getting suspicious, you know.”

“Tenten?”

“Yes,” Sakura says, and releases the coil of hair. “She keeps giving me these – looks. She thinks I’m up to something.”

“You _are_ up to something,” Hinata points out.

Sakura says, outraged, “That’s not the _point._ Anyway, she started telling me all these old legal cases about Imperial Guards who got executed for misconduct, and then she winked at me.”

“Oh,” Hinata answers, and, strangely, starts to blush.

“Hinata,” Sakura says levelly.

Hinata’s face continues to heat in a muted, red flush. She says, “There’s actually an ancient law – more of a clause, really – forbidding intimate relationships between Imperial Guards and their charges. But it hasn’t been broken in so long, most people forgot it existed.”

“You – you never mentioned this!” Sakura splutters, and pushes at Hinata with her foot. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought it might,” Hinata says, and pauses. She stares at Sakura for a while, teeth biting into her lip. “I didn’t want to intimidate you. I know what my family is.”

Sakura slants her head, considering. Looking at Hinata like this, light-drenched in the glow of Alpha Niihara’s twin moons, she can’t believe that she would make any other choices than the ones that led her here.

Besides: Sakura has spent most of her life in the company of one Uzumaki Naruto.

She says, “I should’ve kissed you a lot sooner.”

Hinata, whose skin had only just returned to normal, promptly flushes hot again. Her mouth half-opens, like she’s going to say something, but nothing comes out.

She waits. Eventually, Hinata says, “Sakura,” weakly, and draws her into another kiss, hot and sweet and demanding against Sakura’s mouth. When she pulls back her eyes are heavy and tender. “I could give you a title,” Hinata adds breathlessly. “Captain Haruno Sakura, Viscountess of-”

“By all the Gods,” Sakura says, and hides her face in Hinata’s neck.

“Temiczc, maybe,” Hinata is continuing, unperturbed. “Or Solynque, you would like it there; it’s quite well-known for its golden lakes.”

Sakura begins to kiss her way down Hinata’s body, rolling Hinata onto her back and pressing feather-light touches to her cheekbones, lips, and the dip between her collarbones.

“Indriiya Oa, then?” Hinata asks. Her voice catches when Sakura kisses, soft and insistent, against her navel. “What would you like?”

She tests it out against Hinata’s skin, first; a copy of what Hinata had told her after the duel.

“You,” Sakura says, and smiles.


End file.
